When an exhibition opens and all the taonga are in place, the graphics are up, and the lighting is done it’s hard to imagine all the work that’s been going on to get the exhibition installed.

Last week, at a quiet moment, they let me into the gallery to see how things were going. Here is Sam, one of our exhibition team installers, preparing the case and mount to display the unique huru kuri, dog-skin pelt, cloak which we featured in an earlier blog post.

And finally, before I give away too much – here are several kākahu installed in their cases but carefully covered up until later this week when the conservators will come in and remove the covers.

The whakataukī, or saying, that you can see on the wall speaks to one of the ideas key to this exhibition:

Ko te taura whiri, he whiri i te tangataThe muka (flax fibre) cord is like the cord that connects people.

Muka is the silky fibre extracted from the leaves of harakeke, or flax. After hours of skilled preparation Māori weavers use this muka to weave the kaupapa, or foundation, of a kākahu.

Kākahu in their cases, soon to be revealed in the Kahu Ora Living Cloaks exhibition. Photograph by Pamela Lovis, copyright Te Papa 2012.

So cloaks, or kākahu, are all about connections – the threads that weave us together as people, and the stories that connect people and kākahu. Come and see for yourself, in Kahu Ora Living Cloaks from this Friday 8 June.

3 Responses

thanks Karen – I wish you could come and see it too! The blessing and opening of the exhibition on Thursday morning after our Matariki celebration went well – the kakahu look amazing and we’ve had really good feedback.